


Without You

by StarMaamMke



Series: Without You [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Prequel, lots and lots of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 09:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12296760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarMaamMke/pseuds/StarMaamMke
Summary: Joyce and Hopper have a history of never getting things right. A trip through the years.Prequel to "A Little Night Music"





	Without You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reality_Bytes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reality_Bytes/gifts).



**Hawkins, Indiana**

**1963**

“Mrs. Hopper, I’m s-so… so incredibly sorry for your l-loss,” Joyce Calloway stammered as she and her father stood in front of Georgina and her son, Jim. They were the last to leave the church, the last two people in the receiving line. Joyce felt a twist of anxiety at the prospect. That meant there was no urgency in moving along, being on their way for the afternoon. That meant her father had more time to make an ass of himself. He was already drunk and it was barely 2 PM.

“Thank you, Joyce.” Joyce was about to open her mouth to say something to Jim, who was looking everywhere but her eyes, when her father proceeded to throw up all over his suit and trousers, and Joyce’s sundress. 

“God damn it!” The tiny brunette swore, before clamping her hand over her mouth and casting her wide, mortified eyes towards Jim and his mother. Georgina looked more sympathetic than outraged, and Jim’s jaw was almost to the floor. “I’m so, SO sorry. Please, I just need to get him home…”

Joyce and Jim ended up guiding her father into the cargo bed of the Calloways’ rusted out pickup truck. Neither said a word to each other as they went about the unpleasant business and Joyce was self-conscious of the fact that she probably smelled awful. 

“Thank you. I’m sorry again.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Jim started to walk away when Joyce spoke up again, “And I’m sorry about your father and about -”

“Dumping me for Lonnie a day before my dad dropped dead? Don’t worry about, I’m sure it wasn’t premeditated,” Jim replied without turning around. She felt breathless with guilt, especially when she noted the way he hang his head and hunched his broad shoulders.

“It doesn’t make it feel any better.”

Jim spun around, glaring at her. “You know what? I’m glad you feel terrible! I feel terrible! Your shitty drunk dad puking all over your stupid dress was the highlight of my day, to tell you the truth. If my dad wasn’t rotting in a coffin, I might’ve laughed.”

Joyce bit her lip and looked down, hoping he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “Th-that’s fair, I guess.”

He advanced on her, stopping a mere foot from where she was trembling and hiding her face in her hands. “You should’ve just stayed home instead of trotting your cheating ass over here to ease your guilt.”

“I never cheated on -”

“I. DON’T. CARE. My dad is dead! He’s never coming back! Do you think I care about how bad you feel? Do you think you enter into my mind at all?”

Joyce nodded through her tears, turned walked around the truck to get into the Driver’s seat. She wasn’t strong enough to take the abuse, even if she deserved it. She wasn’t strong enough and she desperately wanted to change out of her filthy dress. 

“Just drive the fuck away, Joyce. Leave. See if I care!” She heard him taunt as she started the truck. She backed away so suddenly that she nearly clipped him with the front end. 

“I’m sorry!” she shouted back one last time as she sped away, vaguely hoping that she’d die on the way home. 

* * *

**Hawkins, Indiana**

**April, 1967**

 

    “You’re cutting into my set-up time,” Jim Hopper accused the heavily pregnant brunette as she waddled about the church basement with a box of party favors in her arms.

 

    “Serves you right for scheduling your wedding on the same day as my baby shower, and don’t talk to me like that.” Joyce Byers looked up at the bit of sky visible through the basement window; it was pea-green in appearance and growing darker by the minute. “I figured Diane wouldn’t want you coming out in this weather, so I took the opportunity to come down and take some things to the tea-room for tomorrow.”

 

    “And Lonnie was okay with you hauling your knocked-up ass around town to do this?” Jim demanded. He hated the frantic edge to his voice, and the tightening in his chest at the thought of her being vulnerable during what was being reported as ‘The Storm of the Decade’. Hawkins was under a Tornado Watch, and the Weatherman was not optimistic.

 

    “I wouldn’t know,” was Joyce’s airy reply. “I haven’t seen him in we–” she frowned. “– that’s actually none of your business,” she finished, definitively.

 

    Jim surprised himself by laughing. It was a short, incredulous bark with a splash of smugness. Joyce gave a start at the sound and dropped the box to the floor with a soft gasp. Jim’s conscience smote him when she turned and stared up at him, her small face white and her eyes wild, looking all the world like a wounded, cornered animal.

 

    “Joyce, I didn’t mean -”

 

    “I suppose I had that coming. I figured after a few years, we’d get past it, but I was wrong,” her voice was flat and lifeless as she crouched to pick up the box. Jim knelt next to her and began to pick up the box for her but she snatched it away with a vicious sort of expedience.

 

    “I’m so sorry about Lonnie.”

 

    “No you’re not. You’re about as sorry about Lonnie as I am about almost hitting you with my dad’s truck after your dad’s funeral.” There was no teasing in her voice, not even anger. Joyce sounded mildly robotic and decidedly exhausted.

 

    “I was kind of an asshole to you that day, no one would have blamed you for trying harder,” Jim joked, desperately hoping for some kind of reaction. Joyce always shut down when she was hurt deep by something. Minor offenses earned the sharp-end of her tongue, but sometimes…

 

“Good talk.” Joyce turned towards the door to the stairwell. “See you around.”

 

“Don’t other people usually set these things up?” Jim blurted out, wanting to keep her in the room long enough to make things right.

 

“What are you talking about?” Joyce asked without turning back.

 

“Baby showers. Why are you doing everything? Don’t you have friends?”

 

The soft whimpering noise Joyce made told Jim that he said the wrong thing. Again. Her thin shoulders slumped and she bowed her head. “My aunts are coming into town late tomorrow. Karen is in your wedding party. I don’t have any friends and my mom is dead.” She turned her neck slightly, just enough so he could make out her profile. Her stubborn chin was trembling and her plump lower lip was stuck out ever so slightly.

 

“Baby,” Jim uttered without thinking. He made his way forward and stood in front of her. Joyce averted her eyes, but he could see she was crying. “Come here.”

 

Jim received a stinging slap to the cheek in lieu of a return of the embrace he attempted to give her. “Get away from me!”

 

He sputtered and started to open his mouth to say something, but the sound of tornado sirens cut him off. “Get down, Joyce!” He grabbed her by the shoulders, guiding her into a crouching position as she squirmed and fought against his grip. “Goddamn it, stop being hardheaded!”

 

Joyce finally cooperated and knelt on the ground, covering her head with her hands. She cursed at him when he covered his body with hers, but then went quiet when the world around them went dead silent - then the freight-train winds howled and he could feel her tremble and hyperventilate.

 

“It will be over in a moment, Joycie. We’re in the safest place – please stop crying, sweetheart – It’s a basement, we’re okay.” Jim’s hand ghosted over her belly during his soothing ministrations, and feeling the concrete proof of her condition made his stomach feel as though it were filled with lead. Goddamn Lonnie Byers. Jim hoped the man was dead in a ditch somewhere. How anyone could leave their pregnant wife… especially when it was Joyce.

 

After several terrible, long minutes, the wind stopped and the world was silent again, save for Joyce’s desperate, gasping sobs.

 

“It’s over,” Jim assured, still holding her.

 

“I need to get to the hospital.”

 

Jim reared back from Joyce, scanning her body for signs of injury. “Did I hurt you? Joyce, I am so, so sorry - I just wanted to make sure you were-“

 

“My water broke.”

 

Jim sprang to his feet and ran across the room. He flung the stairwell door open and peered up. Fallen stone and beams of wood were blocking the exit up the stairs and the sight nearly made him throw up in fear.

 

“Hop, I need to go now!”

 

Jim closed the door and squeezed his eyes shut as he reviewed the situation. The church had Sunday School classrooms in the basement. Classrooms had medical supplies…

 

“HOP!”

 

“Fuck fuck fuck…”

 

Joyce screamed suddenly. Jim turned in time to see her doubled over, her small, pale face a mask of pain.

 

“Can you hold off for a rescue crew?”

 

She could not. Several hours, and countless fights later (mostly Joyce berating Jim as he desperately tried to keep his cool and remember his childhood trips to his Grandpa’s farm), a little boy was brought screaming into the world. Joyce, weak and exhausted, but otherwise out of danger, named him Jonathan before she passed out.

 

“Goddamn Lonnie Byers,” Jim muttered as he held the newborn he had swaddled with a doll’s blanket. He looked from the wrinkled face of the baby, to his ex-girlfriend who snored at his side on a cot, and sincerely hoped her husband was alive. It would be nice to choke the life out of him personally.


End file.
